Language acquisition and learning are subjects that I’m interested in.

Over the years, I’ve worked very hard to acquire knowledge a detailed knowledge several foreign languages. I’ve lived in several countries, and have never had a problem conversing in the local language. And I’m not just talking about rattling off a few survival phrases, either.

Those who have read Thirty-Seven and Pantheon know that I sometimes like to use original quotes from great authors, translated by me, to help make a point. I don’t rely on filters, buffers, or other “interpretations” of the great thinkers. (Thirty-Seven also contains two chapters of detailed suggestions on foreign language learning).

I go right to the original sources. With no filter or buffer.

Not many people know how to do this. But I want to share what I’ve learned over the years, because I know that someone out there is struggling with the same things that I used to struggle with.

Nothing is more sad than to hear or see some expatriate who’s lived in a foreign country, and yet can’t really speak the language. To me, that’s inexcusable.

And guess what? I don’t care if it’s a country that is reputed to have a “hard” language, like the countries of East Asia or the Middle East.

I don’t buy it. No language is inherently more or less difficult than another. You could call this my First Law Of Language. That sentence flies in the face of all the bullshit that you’ve been taught.

Language learning is all a matter of will, technique, persistence, method, and motivation. Saying something is too tough is just a mental roadblock that people like to set up, in order to give themselves a way out.

People want you to think it’s tough, because it makes them feel superior. They want to feel like they belong to an elite club.

Almost all of my learning has been self-taught. That’s right: 99% of it.

I had to learn from trial and error, and from the sweat of my own brow, and from diving into the mosh pit and making my own mistakes. There was no magic tricks, no mind enhancements, no hocus-pocus, and no pep-talks. There was only hard work.

There is a lot of advice out there on this subject that just doesn’t work. Many people have convinced themselves that they can’t reach their goals, or that they just “don’t have the ability” to learn their target language.

But I’m going to tell you something: you can do it. You can.

Languages are spoken by human beings. No one language is inherently “harder” than another. We’re all humans. We all communicate.

I remember before I went through the Marine Corps’ Officer Candidates School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia. Everyone told me how hard it would be. How it would be weeks of sleep deprivation, harassment, and brutal screening and evaluating. And it was.

But you know what? If you do the work beforehand, and if you’re prepared, things are not as bad as people make them out to be. Don’t let other people psych you out. Don’t let other people project their own self-justifying excuses on to you.

I also remember when I first started trying cases in court, to actual juries. Few, very few attorneys actually do this. Having a law license is one thing, but actually practicing law and trying cases is something very, very different.

I remember their reactions. All of them would try to tell me how hard it would be. All of them would tell me that it was “risky” and that I was crazy for doing it.

Most of them never have tried a case in their lives. But I’ve done it dozens of times in federal court and in state court. And won. Why? Not because I’m special.

It’s because I’m methodical, I’m prepared, I have passion, I have fanatical willpower, and I have learned to turn off my fear. It took effort.

So now I’ll tell you why you’re not hitting your goals. Want to know why? Here are the reasons.

1. You’ve psyched yourself out.

You believe the bullshit that Chinese or Arabic or a dozen other languages take some special superhuman power to grasp. You believe the internet marketers and scam artists who want to sell you a bunch of shit that you don’t need.

2. You’re not working hard enough.

You need to put in the work. If you’re not working every day for at least thirty minutes, then your brain is not going to have a chance to cement the new structures in place.

We live in a world where people like to bandy about phrases like, “Work smarter, not harder.” Well, fine. That may be right for some situations. But it isn’t right for every situation.

Imagine you’re trying to shovel a driveway full of snow. You don’t have anything but a shovel to clear the snow. Guess what? The only way that snow is getting out of there is by brute labor. No magic tricks, no mind games, no hocus-pocus. Bend over and do the work, period. Learning a language is drudgery, for the most part. You don’t see progress all the time. It takes sustained effort over a long period of time.

3. Your materials are not good.

You thought it would be good to buy the flashy, expensive language learning “modules” from some big company. You thought you could putz around on the computer. You thought you could learn by sitting in some classroom, and hear some teacher drone on about grammar.

Do you want to know something? I’ve become more and more convinced that people were better off using the language learning methods of the old days, in comparison with the flim-flam that we have now. I’ve looked at old books of language study (for both ancient and modern languages) that were printed from the 1890s to the present.

One of the best books of Arabic grammar in English (W. Wright’s exhaustive study) was done over one hundred years ago. Some of the best references in Latin, Portuguese, and French were produced many decades ago. The quality of humanities scholarship has declined over the years.

And almost without exception, the old stuff is better than the new stuff. I’m serious about this. In the old days, there were no excuses to fall back on. The emphasis was on memorization. The emphasis was on academic rigor, not on feeling good.

In the old days, students were required to memorize large amounts of text in the target language. The words became part of the student’s consciousness.

They would memorize long passages, say, from Virgil’s Aeneid. Or the stirring cantos of the Lusiads in Portuguese. Or the glories of Arabic poetry. Or, in French, the aphorisms of Blaise Pascal.

But now? People want to sit in front of computer screen and zone out, as they watch flash cards appear before their eyes.

The truth is that most language learning books out there are not very good. They simply are not challenging enough. A good resource should have:

A selection of real-world dialogues, so you can learn how to handle yourself in real situations

A selection of readings in the popular press or in basic topics of general interest

Wide margins for you to write notes in (you should be marking up these books like crazy)

4. Your goals are not realistic.

You need to be realistic. The Foreign Service has a language proficiency rating scale that you can use for general reference. For most people, simply being able to get to an intermediate level of proficiency is a big achievement. The average person is not going to be talking like a fluent native speaker, even after years of study, no more than the average person who goes to the gym will end up being as big as a professional bodybuilder.

But everyone can make incredible progress.

5. You’re not interacting enough with native speakers.

You’re not in a foreign country to be pimped out by people for English practice. One of the most irritating things that this globalized world has brought us is this “entitlement for English” mentality. If you are a native speaker of English, stop speaking English to people if you’re in their country.

Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Too bad. You have to decide how badly you want to learn your target language.

If people are hanging around you to use you for English practice, and they’re not helping you reach your goals, fire them. Get rid of them. They’re not respecting you, and they’re not respecting your goals.

6. You’re allowing “fossilized errors” to inhibit your progress.

What are fossilized errors? I talk about this in one of the chapters of Thirty-Seven. This is a language learning mistake that you have made so often that it becomes part of your internal programming. It’s a calcified mistake that’s hard to get rid of. But you can limit them and remove them if you can identify them.

A native speaker is good for helping you identify your fossilized errors. One this has been done, you can find alternate spoken constructions to replace them.

7. You are focused on looking busy, and not on working.

Some people think that going through the mechanics of studying is equivalent to studying. Some people think that installing language learning software will act as a substitute for actually doing the work. Most of the language learning software out there is overpriced and not of much use beyond the very basic, beginner stages.

You need to understand that there’s a difference between looking busy, and being busy.

These are seven of the main reasons why people hit plateaus in their language studies. If you read through this list, and find that some of them sound familiar, then you’ll be on your way to breaking through the barrier to higher and higher achievement.

Because remember: it’s all worth it. Believe me. Knowing another language is like having another soul. It’s like being able to shift yourself from one time and place, to another time and place.

All you need is persistence, encouragement, and the ability to identify your “sticking points.”

I can really relate too a lot on what you have said about do not let other people psych you out. Don’t let other people project their own self-justifying excuses on to you.

There are couple of subjects on my curriculum in university, and a lot of people are saying that it is very hard and it will make you decide to drop out or you will fail. Preparation and resourcefulness are very important especially for doing ,,hard” tasks.

I am an English speaker who learned some Japanese and Spanish as an adult. These are just my thoughts.

There absolutely are differences in difficulty between languages; however, the difficulty is not as important as your will to learn a particular language.

French is objectively easier than Japanese for an English speaker, but I have little desire to learn French and I adore Japan and Japanese culture. For this reason I have made more headway with Japanese than I likely ever will with French.

My advice to anyone learning a language is to talk to people in that language and have authentic experiences in that language. Record your conversations on your phone if possible and review them. You will sound horrible but you will get better.

Watch films (with subtitles to start with) and listen to audiobooks (read the English text at the same time). Read parallel texts. Put yourself in situations where you need to use the language and you will rise to the task.

Flashcards can have their place but they are not the be all and end all. I used them to learn Kanji. A pack of paper flashcards in your pocket may be better than digital ones on your phone or computer.

Textbooks are good for some people and others do better watching videos. Avoid anything which is text only and make it a rule to listen to audio from the get go.

Talk to yourself out loud or in your head in your target language everyday. Create inner monologues to describe your life. Look up the words you lack.

Once you start learning, consider yourself a speaker of your target language. It doesn’t matter if you slack off or are unable to practice for a while, just start again where you left off.

Finally, enjoy learning and avoid exam-style cramming. Many things in life are a grind, language learning should not be one of them.

Thanks for writing this article. It definitely made me think about how to improve the way I go about learning new languages. The fossilized errors have been a big problem.

You mentioned the old language learning books are better than the new versions. How far back do you recommend one start looking? Specifically, do you have any recommendations on excellent starting books to learn Spanish?

No hard and fast rules on that, man. I would haunt some old bookstores or look for older works in libraries or on Amazon. See what you like, experiment, and see what works. Start at the beginning of the twentieth century and go forward from there. As for Spanish, I can’t recommend any sources, because I’ve only studied Portuguese, Latin, and Arabic.

The language courses I have used are the following. All of the materials below I own and have used for a long time. Make sure you get the books, any workbooks, and the audio recordings (very critical):

Arabic In A Flash (Vol 1 & 2) by Tuttle Publishing Company. This is a fantastic resource and is published by an Australian company. Good way to build a vocabulary fast.

These books and materials are the most useful ones I can remember. I have used all of them. For listening practice, you can listen to news and soap operas on the internet. You can also translate articles from the Arabic press that you find on the internet.

In terms of methods, I’ve covered this kind of advice in detail in my book “Thirty Seven” which you can find on my site http://www.qcurtius.com/books/. I have a couple chapters devoted to that subject.

Hope this helps, man. Remember that with languages, as you know, persistence and endurance is key. You must be prepared for a daily investment of time over a few years if you really want to become proficient. But it is worth it, of course…!

This is a fantastic article, Quintus. I just have two questions:
(a) Can you please elaborate on the ‘fossilised errors’ point or give me reference to where I can read more on it?
(b) You mentioned that you speak several languages. Is Russian one of them?

I am a translator of Latin, so it is extremely good; my Portuguese is not bad; and my Arabic used to be average but is now decayed for lack of use and practice. Enough is in long term memory, though, for me to revive it if I ever needed to.